BI Graphics
Most millennials have no clue how those two changes have hurt them. After all, macroeconomic policy doesn't come up very much on Snapchat or Instagram. The following charts go some way to explaining the extent of the damage.

They also show that over the same period, older people — their parents' generation — have grabbed £2.7 trillion ($3.4 trillion) in newly created wealth for themselves.

The mortgage market has been a disaster for millennials

Home ownership rates for millennials are now so low they're at levels not seen since World War I:

Millennials are largely priced out of the UK property market. This is what has happened to property prices since the 2008 crisis, according to the Office for National Statistics:

ONS

The average price of a house has gone up by nearly £70,000 ($87,000) in the last 12 years.

Over the same period, wages stagnated:

Resolution Foundation

Put those two things together — rising house prices and stagnant wages — and the result is that the time it takes the average person to save a deposit for a house has increased from three years to 20 years, since 1998:

Resolution Foundation

That hurts millennials the most because, being young, they have the fewest number of cash-saving years behind them.

Housing price increases have mostly been fueled by low interest rates, set by the Bank of England. The BoE decided to set those rates to juice the economy with cheap money after the 2008 crisis:

Their decision — which made taking out a mortgage very cheap — was hugely damaging for millennials. Anyone who had enough cash for a deposit suddenly had no reason to rent. Interest rates are so low you're basically being punished if you pay rent rather than pay a mortgage, which earns you equity over time.

Naturally, buyers rushed to get mortgages. The increase in buyers drove prices up, causing a sharp division between those with enough cash to fund a mortgage deposit (older people) and those without (millennials). The millennials thus ended up as renters, not owners.

This chart from the Resolution Foundation shows that older workers' defined benefit plans were the equivalent of 21% of their annual income. Millennials' defined contribution pensions are only worth 5% of their income:

The Resolution Foundation says that this represents almost a direct transfer of wealth from Millennials to older people: The older pension plans — which failed to grow to meet their commitments precisely because interest rates have been so low — required companies shovel more money at them. If interest rates were higher, that money could have gone into Millennial pensions or salaries:

"Importantly, a substantial amount of this money will form the retirement income of past workers and those already in retirement. In other words, billions of pounds each year is being extracted from the productivity (and therefore the potential earnings pots) of today's workers to pay the retirement incomes of yesterday's."

Note how similar the number cited by RF — £35 billion annually — is to Business Insider's calculation of the aggregate pension wealth being stripped from Millennials annually. The two numbers describe different variables but they both give you an idea of the scale of the annual redirection of wealth away from millennials.

So, what has been the combined cost of these two factors, low interest and pension cuts?

"All of the £2.7 trillion rise in wealth since 2007 has been harvested by those over the age of 45, two thirds by those over the age of 65. By contrast, those aged 16-34 have seen their wealth decline by around 10% over the period."

The situation is particularly harsh for Millennials because low-interest rates exacerbated the damage being done to pensions.

Interest rates and pension plans aren't acts of god or forces of nature. They are policies that human beings choose. There were plenty of alternatives: The Bank of England could have pursued higher rates or made fewer rate cuts. The government could have mandated haircuts for defined benefit pensions or more aggressive "superannuation" for defined contribution plans. Westminster could have mandated fiscal policy easing (government spending or tax cuts) instead of relying on monetary policy easing (interest rate cuts).

But those alternatives were not taken. Instead, virtually the entire economic cost of the post-crisis period was laid off onto Millennials.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Business Insider.